Marstons and Punch have both made statements this week.
Marston’s have announced that helping tennants through hard times in this financial year will cost them £2m. Punch haven’t told us how much their lessees have had returned to them in assistance, but they have said that their shares are up some 14% as a US hedge fund has taken a 10% stake in their company.
I suspect that Punch are quite good at what they do, make money out of a pub estate, but the contrast with Marston’s could not be more stark. Punch have acquired a reputation as one of the more ruthless pub operators out there, which presumably means their numbers stack up.
Marston’s, on the other hand, have proven to be one of the more enlightened operators who will do everything they can to help their tennants survive tough times, although this business philosophy would appear to have cost them a considerable sum of money.
It may change at some stage, with somebody somewhere deciding that Marston’s need to be more ruthless and less benign as a landlord, but it’s possible that their saving grace is the fact that they are still a brewer as well as a pub owner and it’s in their interests to maintain standards and continuity to ensure throughflow of product.
Punch may be a successful pub estate operator, but Marston’s still manage to run good pubs and that is to be applauded in these testing times.
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Vive Le Difference
Marstons and Punch have both made statements this week.
Marston’s have announced that helping tennants through hard times in this financial year will cost them £2m. Punch haven’t told us how much their lessees have had returned to them in assistance, but they have said that their shares are up some 14% as a US hedge fund has taken a 10% stake in their company.
I suspect that Punch are quite good at what they do, make money out of a pub estate, but the contrast with Marston’s could not be more stark. Punch have acquired a reputation as one of the more ruthless pub operators out there, which presumably means their numbers stack up.
Marston’s, on the other hand, have proven to be one of the more enlightened operators who will do everything they can to help their tennants survive tough times, although this business philosophy would appear to have cost them a considerable sum of money.
It may change at some stage, with somebody somewhere deciding that Marston’s need to be more ruthless and less benign as a landlord, but it’s possible that their saving grace is the fact that they are still a brewer as well as a pub owner and it’s in their interests to maintain standards and continuity to ensure throughflow of product.
Punch may be a successful pub estate operator, but Marston’s still manage to run good pubs and that is to be applauded in these testing times.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 12:52 pm and is filed under General, News & Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.